What Is ARK?

ARK is a digital currency. It is one of the major contributor that assist in the cryptocurrency universe. The Ark platform has been based over an exceptionally secure center blockchain. Additionally, key decentralized advances have been incorporated and utilize cases have been produced to grandstand Ark's capacity.

The stage is easy to understand to make blockchain innovation client reception high. With time, this biological system will have the capacity to adjust to all difficulties as it propels.

The organization has a group of qualified workers with interesting aptitudes. The group is comprehensive of Network Engineers, Web Developers, Money Managers, Hardware Experts, Traders, Musicians, Business Owners, and Social Media Promoters.

The ARK group includes 30 individuals. The partners are energetic about their undertaking to team up and build up the ARK people group and biological system.

Why ARK Is Needed

The ARK platform is required on the grounds that individuals need to make income later on and ARK gives precisely that. It gives future income potential by means of spanned blockchains. ARK offers significant administrations to clients using multipurpose information and these associations with make new highlights.

ARK Roadmap

Benefits Of Ark

1. Self-Sustaining

The point of Ark is to make the Ark stage open to customers effectively. This is to a degree that customers don't know that they are utilizing it. The group offers unique administrations that clients comprehend, need, and will purchase with the stage. The ARK group has grown more administrations and stages coming about because of the ARK innovation.

This offers disconnected and online surges of income for ARK. This has prompted snappier innovative work for new and fascinating approaches to expand buyer cooperation, increasing the value of ARK, and instructing clients on blockchain innovation. Consolidation of income streams into this undertaking gives more specific administrations to reception by clients.

2. Privacy

Clients can send ARK exchanges utilizing ARK's Anonymous Network Integration which has discretionary protection. Protection applies to all administrations that have been made for the ARK platform. These administrations can likewise be offered by outsider innovation incorporation organization.

3. Security

ARK comprehends that security is a noteworthy worry to everybody. This is the reason security and cryptographic principals are joined all through the whole framework. This ensures a safe center and meets the desires and prerequisites of the clients. ARK constantly attempts inner repeating entrance tests and hazard examination to offer a framework that meets the elevated requirements required for this sort of condition.

4. Smartbridge

ARK keen extensions connect together exclusive and valuable blockchains to extend the span of the stage. These shrewd scaffolds permit correspondence between blockchains that are approved and spanned.

These blockchains consequently pick up a capacity to perform propelled capacities and assignments. With an end goal to interface the blockchains, keen extensions make a bond that is bringing together among different environments. For example, the ARK group will connect Bitcoin, Lisk, and Ethereum as the principal blockchain.

5. Speed

The center of ARK has an arrangement that produces quick exchanges, having 8 second piece times. The higher throughput is accessible at whatever point ARK requires it because without bounds scaling that is effectively actualized.

6. Decentralization

The voting arrangement of ARK is more decentralized than different DPoS agreement models. Voting weight is spread over all votes as opposed to relegating all weight to one vote. Henceforth the whole system can't be assumed control.

Downsides Of The Product

1. Despite the security features that are incorporated into the system, the money will never be entirely secure. This is due to hacking and hence your funds will never be 100% secure. There is still a risk that you might lose your funds.

2. Adoption of the currency faces a major challenge due to government regulation. The widespread of the technology is limited since not all governments are willing to adopt digital currency fully.

3. The technology consumes a lot of computer power due to a lot of mathematical solutions that are used to validate transactions.

What is the ARK SmartBridge

By now many people want to know the technical details of ARK’s SmartBridge but broken down into a less technical and everyday example. That’s what this article will focus on. This article will also assume for examples that most blockchains are already SmartBridge compatible.

SmartBridge is the ability to connect and communicate between blockchains. By connecting blockchains, we can solve the great question of the last few years in the altcoin community. Which coin will replace bitcoin? The answer… none of them, and all of them. Let me explain.

With ARK’s SmartBridge Technology every coin becomes even more powerful, every app produced on any blockchain has the potential to reach a greater audience and even bitcoin can gain the functionality of every altcoin through a simple blockchain token called ARK.

Ark’s SmartBridge communicates between the blockchains using a special data section called Vendor Fields and special Encoded Listener nodes that comb through this data for tasks that it can perform.

What does that mean?

In order for ARK to become the medium/intermediary between chains, each chain needs a small snippet of code implemented. It is very easy to insert and not harmful to any blockchain, current or otherwise.

Once this tiny code is inserted into the core code of any blockchain, that’s it. Now that blockchain is connected to ARK. We make it painless and extremely simple to implement, and will provide very easy to follow instructions with 24/7 support via slack chat.

Ok, so what does that REALLY mean?

It’s quite simple. If you want to trigger an event on a blockchain via a different blockchain, you check if that chain is SmartBridge compatible. If it is, then you can issue a SmartBridge transaction to any compatible blockchain via the ark wallet and the possibilities are endless.

Example 1: If you wanted to trigger an ETH smart contract but hold ark, you could just send the instructions through ark SmartBridge, right in the wallet to trigger the event. The code embedded in the ETH chain is always listening for an ark SmartBridge transaction and will collect this info and trigger the function to issue a contract.

Example 2: You want to issue a record entry in Factom, but you only hold ARK. So you would go to your ARK wallet, enter the correct info and instructions for the FCT chain via the SmartBridge tab. Then send it. That’s it, now the FCT chain receives the info and acts appropriately.

Example 3: I want to send 10 ARK to my ETH wallet. This would require an encoded listener with a back-end ability to exchange currencies. (ie: Shapeshift, Changelly, or Coinbase) Once I send my 10 ARK to my ETH wallet, the encoded listener sees this TX (transaction) as an exchange function and acts accordingly.

The encoded listener automatically picks up that this TX needs a conversion, so it acts as a relay node picking up the TX, converting it, and rebroadcasting the TX on its way to the ETH wallet. The encoded listener collects a small fee for processing the TX.

(Example 3 would require Shapeshift to be its own encoded listener so that it is always looking for the next SmartBridge TX. Just like ARK, Encoded listener nodes set their own transaction fees. Which can be adjusted by the node operator but not ARK.)

Encoded listeners:

The Encoded listener node is a hub for listening to SmartBridge transactions. This transaction hub can be setup and run by anyone, Shapeshift, Changelly or even Coinbase. Anyone that wants to act as a medium to help the network can. And in exchange for providing this service they will be collecting transaction fees for passing data or exchanging currencies via SmartBridge.

I hope this article made it easier for everyone to understand how ARK SmartBridge technology will work. We will be releasing a more in-depth and technical whitepaper for SmartBridge once we get closer to full SmartBridge release.

Getting Started With ARK

ARK provides users, developers, and startups with innovative blockchain technologies. We aim to create an entire ecosystem of linked chains and a virtual spiderweb of endless use-cases that make ARK highly flexible, adaptable, and scalable. ARK is a secure platform designed for mass adoption and will deliver the services that consumers want and developers need.

Fast - Tired of staring endlessly at your wallet waiting for your transaction to clear? With 8 second block times, ARK’s network is one of the fastest in the industry.

Decentralized - ARK utilizes a modified Delegated-Proof-Of-Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism featuring 51 delegates. These delegates are tasked with running the network and are rewarded with block rewards, much like miners in Bitcoin.

Scalable - Primary goal with ARK is to keep the core blockchain lean and blazing fast. Through the use of our custom built SmartBridge functionality we are able to off-load non-essential functions to hundreds of side-chains. This allows for great scalability while keeping the main ARK blockchain lean and fast.

Collaborative - Our primary goal with ARK is to keep the core blockchain lean and blazing fast. Through the use of our custom built SmartBridge functionality we are able to off-load non-essential functions to hundreds of side-chains. This allows for great scalability while keeping the main ARK blockchain lean and fast.

Bridging - ARK bridges well known blockchains through the use of our custom SmartBridge technology, making an ecosystem of interconnected blockchains possible.

Open Source - Looking for a blockchain solution for your business or project? ARK is your solution. Our ecosystem and projects are completely open-source to help facilitate your needs to launch your very own SmartBridge compatible blockchain. Everything is hosted on GitHub for your ease, and convenience.

How To Get An ARK Wallet?

Ark has it’s own official desktop wallet which you can download here. To create your Ark wallet, download the client and click the “Create Account” link a seed consisting of a number of words – copy these down safely somewhere. The client will then ask you type in 3 words from the seed, once that’s done your new wallet will be setup and you will have your address to transfer your Ark tokens to.

Desktop Wallet

The ARK Desktop Wallet is natively built for all major Operating Systems. Our full HD wallet meets the top security standards in the industry and supports the Ledger Nano S secure hardware wallet.

ARK wallets connect to fully synced network peers removing the need to download the full blockchain. With the ARK wallet you are up and running as soon as it’s installed, no more syncing! And, with 8 second block times you can actually see your transactions occur in real time! No more checking in every 30 minutes to see if your transactions were confirmed.

ICO Details

The Arc ICO ended on December 11, 2016. The sale raised 1,279.67BTC, ($998,000 USD, at the time) which was below the project’s target of 2,000 BTC. After much community deliberation, the team decided to proceed with their roadmap while offering optional refunds to any investors who wanted them.

ARK tokens were distributed at the time the genesis block was forged which was earlier this year. If the funding goal was not reached, the plan was to return investments to participants in the form of a full refund. However, as previously mentioned, a decision was made to simply offer investors the option to request a refund; Ark retained most of the funds raised during the ICO.

24 hours after the conclusion of the token exchange, 20% of the funds were released from escrow to the ARK development team. These initial funds were used to pay for corporate formation fees, early developer hiring, the organization of a legal team, and other business related payments.

The remaining funds have and will continue to be used to build the ARK network, develop SmartBridge links with other blockchain networks, manufacture Smartcards, and promote ARK services.

Install ARK in Ledger

The Ledger Nano S manages Ark token. It works on Windows (7+), Mac (10.8+), Linux. It requires one USB port to plug your Ledger Nano S or your Blue. it doesn't work on Android and iOS. Be careful, this application doesn't work with a Ledger Wallet application but with the Ark Client software you need to install.

The Nano, the Blue and the HW.1 don't support Ark.

To create and launch your Ark wallet:

1. install the Ark Client software on your computer

You need to have installed at least the version 1.3.2 or to update the Ark client if you already have it in a lower version by clicking on "New version available" in the upper left corner.

A security warning may prompt from your Windows or Mac system stating that they do not know the publisher. Click on "more information" to go on installing the software.

2. install the Ark application on your device via the Ledger Manager

Launch the Ledger Manager (click to see how to install and use it if you don't have it installed yet)

Connect your Nano S, enter your PIN, and stay on the dashboard.

Click on the green bottom arrow icon near the Ark logo. Do not hesitate to scroll down if you do not see the application. If you still do not see it, please update your device.

Confirm the installation when required on your device.

Quit the Ledger Manager

These 2 first steps are only required once. Now everything is ready to manage your Arkaccount.

3. Once these apps are installed, open your Ark wallet:

Launch the Ark Client software on your computer

Open your Ark application on the device itself

Check that the "Browser support" setting of this Ark application is disabled

Ark> Settings > Browser support

ON A NANO S

- scroll with the right button to find the "settings", press both buttons to open them

- scroll with the right button to find the "browser support", press both buttons to open it

- select NO by pressing both buttons to disable the browser support

A new wallet shows up

Click on the title of the wallet or on the address to see the wallet details and use it

For each sending transaction, the Ledger device will ask you to verify the details of your transaction (amount, fees, address) before confirming. Press right button on the Nano S, tap on the Blue.

The following guide has been pusblished by the ARK team (https://blog.ark.io/full-ledger-nano-s-hardware-wallet-guide-for-ark-7bf7bfff4cef) :

3.1 Sending ARK to another ARK address

In order to send your ARK from your Ledger Nano ARK address, click on the send icon at the top right of the desktop wallet. Then input the address you are sending to and enter the amount of ARK you would like to send.

After you are done click on ‘Sign with ledger’ button (notice: since we are using Ledger now, there is no need to input your passphrase as this is now handled inside your Ledger device).

After you click on ‘Sign with Ledger’ check your Ledger device, a text will be shown. Operation: ‘Transfer’ the Ledger will now show you where you are sending to. To authorize the transaction click on right Ledger button, to reject the transfer click on left Ledger button.

If you click on the right button, you will authorize it. Now looking back at the desktop wallet you will notice the summary of the transaction. To execute it just click on the ‘Send’ button and that is it!

3.2 Voting With Your Ledger Wallet

In order to vote from your Ledger Nano ARK address, click on VOTES from the ARK address you wish to vote from inside the desktop wallet. Then click the ‘ADD DELEGATE’ button.

Now you have 2 options, you can either choose from a drop down menu (the 1st line, a list of currently forging delegates) or write the delegate name you wish to vote for (2nd line).

Now a delegate will be added to the voting list. But we still have to verify and sign a voting transaction to confirm your vote. Click on the ‘VOTE’ button.

Now we need to sign the transaction with Ledger. A popup will now show in the desktop wallet. Click on the ‘SIGN WITH LEDGER’ button, and look on your Ledger device where it will say, ‘Vote’ with an overview of the voting TX. Click on right button to authorize or left button to deny voting TX.

Once you confirm on the Ledger device, you will see an overview of the voting transaction in the Desktop wallet — click on the ‘SEND NOW!’ button to confirm voting TX — that is it!

3.3 Changing Vote (Unvoting) With Your Ledger Wallet

If you want to change your vote from your Ledger ARK address, the steps are the same as voting with your Ledger. Click on an ARK Ledger address you wish to change your vote for, and click on the VOTES tab, then untick the box next to the delegate you are currently voting for, then click on the ‘VOTE’ button.

Now a popup will show in the desktop wallet. Click on the ‘SIGN WITH LEDGER’ button, then confirm on your Ledger device using the right button.

Now you will see an overview of the un-voting transaction on the Desktop wallet — click on the ‘SEND NOW!’ button to confirm your vote removal TX.

Now if you want to change your vote wait for 10–15 seconds, and click on your current Ledger ARK address in the left menu (the one you were un-voting from) to update the view of the voting list — it should be empty now. If still not visable, simply restart your wallet. If you want to vote again, just follow the steps for voting under 3.2 of this section!

3.4 Multiple Ark Ledger Addresses

As you will notice, once you first start using your Ledger with Ark you will see on the main screen of the desktop wallet, ‘1 Accounts’ listed.

After you start using the 1st Ledger Nano ARK address (sending transactions out/voting/sending to another address) and you quit or restart the ARK desktop wallet, the next time you open your wallet with the ledger connected you will now see ‘2 Accounts’.

You might be wondering what is that? Do not worry, this is normal. ARK and Ledger support BIP44 proposal, meaning your one Ledger device can have thousands of ARK addresses derived from 1 master passphrase.

So you can have and use as many ARK Ledger addresses as you want — if you want more, start using the 2nd address (after one transaction out). Once you start your ARK desktop wallet again, there will now be ‘3 Accounts’, and this continues for as many accounts as you want!

To send from any of the Ledger ARK addresses click on ‘Ledger Nano S’ and on the left you will see a list of current ARK Ledger Nano S addresses.

That is all for now! If you have further questions check the FAQ in the section below.

HOW DOES IT WORK

The Ark Client is an account manager, where you can send and receive Ark transactions, vote and check your balance.

This application is published by the Ark team.

Using a Ledger Nano S to manage Ark means that your private keys and sensitive operations are protected inside the Secure element of the device. They are not exposed online.

For each sending transaction, your application will ask you to verify it on your device: your device will display the amount, recipient address and you will have to manually sign by confirming everything is alright on the device.

The Ark Ledger support is a Beta one. You'll find more details on the Ark blog to use it and understand everything about it.

ARK Resources

How To Buy ARK?

Buy ARK in Bittrex

To buy Ark with Bittrex, first create a Bittrex account. If you already have one, skip this step. Next, deposit some Bitcoin or another coin you have into the Wallets tab on the top bar (near the left side.)

To do this, search the coin you are wanting to deposit, and push the + button alongside it.

You may need to push "Generate New Address". After that is done, deposit the desired amount by sending to that address. Wait for it to confirm. If you have deposited a coin other than Bitcoin, sell that through Bittrex before continuing.

Navigate to the Bitcoin Markets Tab on the top left.

In the search box, type ARK and click it. You should see a page like this appear.

Scroll down and you should see a BUY ARK and a SELL ARK.

Go to BUY and click MAX (or type in how much Ark you would like). For Price, this is what you would buy the Ark at. I recommend putting Last for the fastest and cheapest option. After you have purchased it, go back to the Wallets tab you were at before, and you should see your shiny new Ark! For withdrawal, push the - and paste in your Ark address from your wallet.

How To Earn ARK?

Ark’s main appeal and the reason it could potentially revolutionize the cryptocurrency market and, more specifically, the blockchain technology which underpins it, is its ability to link the various competing blockchain networks together and bridge the gap, so to speak, between them.

This is a big deal because, without projects like Ark, coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Lisk, to use three notable examples, cannot be interoperable on the same blockchain because the technology is incompatible.

Ark changes that by utilising SmartBridges, making an interconnected ecosystem of blockchains possible. It also opens up a whole world of other possibilities such as being able to trigger events on other blockchains, to give you an idea of how big this could be and what could be done with it, the Ark blog lists the following examples:

If you wanted to trigger an ETH smart contract but hold ark, you could just send the instructions through ark SmartBridge, right in the wallet to trigger the event.

You want to issue a record entry in Factom, but you only hold ARK. So you would go to your ARK wallet, enter the correct info and instructions for the FCT chain via the SmartBridge tab.

I want to send 10 ARK to my ETH wallet. This would require an encoded listener with a back-end ability to exchange currencies. Once I send my 10 ARK to my ETH wallet, the encoded listener sees this TX (transaction) as an exchange function and acts accordingly.

One of the key attributes of Ark is the speed at which transactions are processed on the blockchain. The website claims Ark’s Core is configured to produce ultra-fast transactions with eight second block times – this is well above what Bitcoin, Ethereum or pretty much any other altcoin on the market can achieve and, as such, gives Ark a strong advantage over many more established coins.

Additionally, Ark is highly scalable meaning higher throughput is available whenever ARK needs it so as Ark becomes more popular and more transactions are taking place per second, the infrastructure can still maintain its impressive processing speed.

Another innovative feature of Ark is the democratic way in which the project is run. ARK provides a more decentralized voting system than other DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) consensus models. Voting weight is divided across all votes instead of assigning 100% weight to each vote, making it nearly impossible for a takeover of the entire network.

The rewards process in Ark works as follows:

Accounts vote with their Ark for delegates.

The delegates with the most votes (the top 51) are allowed to forge new blocks.

For each forged block a delegate gets a reward

The delegate can decide to pay forward some rewards to his voters

Read here about the delegation process and here about the forging process.

We think Ark is a very promising project with a strong core team of developers which has the potential to revolutionise the cryptocurrency market.

Where To Spend ARK?

You have to obtain ARK on an exchange or from a current holder of ARK tokens. The current exchanges ARK is listed on are:

Bittrex

Cryptopia

Litebit

Coss

Coinspot

Coinswitch

The main exchange with the most daily volume is Bittrex. You will have to obtain Bitcoin (BTC) first and send it to Bittrex. After that you can trade your BTC for ARK. Other exchanges like Cryptopia and Coss offer other token pairings such as ETH-ARK and USDT-ARK.

What Is ARK Mining?

There is no mining in ARK but you can vote for delegates.

How To Vote or Un-Vote an ARK Delegate

You can use your ARK to vote or un-vote a delegate. In this short guide we’ll show you how you can vote (cast a vote towards the delegate you choose — whether it is yourself or another community member you wish to support, like projects, pools, or a friend, or to un-vote a delegate you are already voting for in case you decide you want to change the vote to someone else.

Voting with your ARK can provide you with extra ARK due to the forging rewards that are processed by delegates. Rewards are awarded to 51 top ranked active delegates.

First if you haven’t, you will need to download and install the Ark Desktop Client from here : https://github.com/ArkEcosystem/ark-desktop/releases , and then import and access the wallet you want to vote from.

If you want to register a delegate yourself, you should follow this guide first :

https://blog.ark.io/how-do-i-register-as-an-ark-delegate-133ed2bf218

Some basic voting info :

- 1 ARK ADDRESS CAN VOTE FOR ONLY 1 DELEGATE AT A TIME (if you wish to vote for more than 1 delegate, split you wallet in more ARK addresses and repeat the vote process — for example, send the amount you wish to vote from the second wallet to the second wallet,

- 1 ARK EQUALS A VOTING WEIGHT OF 1. The more ark you hold, the more weight you hold in your possession — but note that if you split the wallet your voting splits with it. For example, if you have 1,000 ARK your voting power is equal to 1,000 ARK, if you split that in to 2 equal wallets each having 500 ARK the voting power of the 1st wallet will be 500 ARK and the 2nd one 500 ARK.

- EACH VOTE OR UN-VOTE COSTS 1 ARK. When you vote for a delegate it costs 1 ARK. When you un-vote, the cost is the same 1 ARK.

Latest ARK News

ARK Attending and Sponsoring JSHacks

ARK is proud to be a sponsor of JSHacks “Bucharest Blockchain Edition”, a JavaScript hackathon in Romania — Bucharest, running from the 20th through the 22nd of October 2017.

This is the second large hackathon that ARK has sponsored and attended. The ARK team members that will be attending consist of Lars, Francois, and Stefan.

One of ARK’s main goals of this event is to present a blockchain workshop. François-Xavier Thoorens, ARK’s Head of Development, will be running the workshop and giving developers an insight on blockchain technology. This workshop encourages developers to become part of this fascinating technology, and make ARK more well-known in developer communities.

ARK’s vision in the long term is a vibrant community of developers and ARK core developers that work on open-source projects together, while growing the ARK Ecosystem and aiming to improve our everyday lives.

The New ARK Website

The website has been totally redesigned & re-coded. The previous version used Wordpress for CMS. The current version does not rely on any CMS or DB. It is simple, minimalist, and clean HTML5 / CSS3 / JS, for a totally new look which is more inline with what we are, and what we aim to achieve.